Geffner: Mets dead if Wagner's arm is dead

Tuesday

Sep 25, 2007 at 2:00 AM

You see Billy Wagner in the clubhouse before games these days and it's a frightening and disconcerting sight, with him wrapped with mounds of bandages, running both vertically and horizontally, across his left shoulder and down and around his back.

Michael P. Geffner

You see Billy Wagner in the clubhouse before games these days and it's a frightening and disconcerting sight, with him wrapped with mounds of bandages, running both vertically and horizontally, across his left shoulder and down and around his back.

It has been that way ever since he announced so stunningly, in the last week of August, that his arm had suddenly, inexplicably, gone dead on him, soon followed by another admission that he also had a bad case of back spasms.

All of which has made Wagner, at the worst of times, with the season on the line every day now, the greatest uncertainty in the one area the Mets cannot afford to be uncertain about, with them carrying a bullpen full of guys you can only watch safely with your breath held and between crossed fingers covering both eyes.

From one day to the next, Wagner is a closer who doesn't know until the last second of games, until he warms up around the eighth inning or so, whether he'll be able to close. And even if he does manage to drag himself out there, pulling along that sluggish thing that used to be his weapon of choice, he's not sure what exactly to expect, putting him in the same strange position as everybody else around the Mets.

"A (dead arm) is a weird thing," Ron Darling, the color man on the Mets' TV games, was telling me before the Mets' 13-4 loss to the Nationals last night. "Your arm feels so heavy all of a sudden, like you're not strong enough to carry it around all the time. And when you try to pop the ball in games, the velocity just isn't there. You can't do anything but rest it."

This, of course, is a luxury the Mets don't have with Wagner. He pitches or they lose, he pitches or they don't make the playoffs, he's right or the Mets are not.

On Sunday against the Marlins, while the radar guns had him throwing 96 mph, as hard as ever, he still blew a save by giving up his second homer in just eight appearances — after not surrendering one in more than two months — and that stat alone should tell you that something is not right about Wagner.

Even though he doesn't dare, likely on the advice of Mets' counsel, utter the words "dead" and "arm" in the same sentence anymore. Even though Willie Randolph does his best publicly to act completely unconcerned about the matter.

"I'm always ready to go with a Plan B, just in case," the Mets manager said with a shrug. "If Billy can't pitch, I'll have (Jorge) Sosa close for us, or Aaron (Heilman) close for us. I'm confident that no matter who I give the ball to they'll get the job done."

It sounds nice and positive and loyal, but I don't believe a word of it.

You can sense the concern about Wagner all over Shea, especially and most importantly from Wagner himself. When people ask how he feels, as he walks around looking like something between Quasimodo and the Mummy, he responds with nothing but a ticked-off expression and saying — thick with sarcasm and completely monotone — "Feel? I feel fantastic."

Last night, with starter Mike Pelfrey pitching the way we've come to expect him to pitch, lasting just 5ª ineffective innings that allowed the Nationals to score seven runs, the Mets, with another passionless performance, never made it to the ninth with a lead, their magic number for clinching the division staying at five and their lead over the idle Phillies shrinking to two.

So Randolph never had to brace himself wondering whether Wagner would be ready to pitch, and Wagner didn't have to torture himself wondering where he'd be after his warm-ups.

From now until the end of things this season, whenever that is, Wagner will remain the great uncertainty around here, except for this: Without him trotting in to punch out games and pitching the way he did for the first five months of the season, the Mets don't have a prayer.

Unless Wagner is Wagner, you can forget about any baseball in Flushing beyond Sunday.

They'll be deader than a dead arm.

Michael P. Geffner's column appears regularly.

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